New Media & Social Relationship

 New Media & Social Relationship

One of the effects of social media is encouraging people to form and cherish "social media friendships" over actual friendships. The term 'friend' as used on social media is a weak shadow of traditional friendship. Real friends actually know each other, frequently interact face to face, and have a personal bond.

People can use social media to stay connected to long-distance friends and family members or improve communication with their partners, children, and healthcare professionals.

In contrast, social media use can lead to less quality in-person time spent with loved ones and relationship dissatisfaction. These drawbacks may be related to pre-existing relationship issues or psychological conditions.

Online and Offline Relationships and Social Media

There is a well-developed, interdisciplinary body of research that considers how social media enabled online relationships relate to offline relationships. As the scale and scope of the internet have grown, online relationships, or relationships in which individuals interact entirely through computer mediated communications systems such as email, have become more common. These relationships typically are contrasted with offline relationships in which interactions between individuals occur through traditional media such as telephone or face-to-face conversation. Scholars and commentators have described three ways in which social media enabled online relationships relate to traditional, offline relationships:

(1) social media systems enable new relationships by overcoming the limitations of offline relationships;

(2) social media systems enable online relationships that substitute for, and thus diminish, offline relationships; and

(3) social media systems enable online relationships that complement and reinforce offline relationships

Online relationships as new opportunities

Much of the initial excitement about social media systems over the past several decades has stemmed from a somewhat utopian view of their potential to enable relationships that otherwise would be difficult or impossible. Through the use of social media, individuals can “meet,” befriend, and work with people in organizations and countries that would otherwise not be accessible. For example, microblogs enabled some political activities in the Middle East during the Arab Spring in 2011; and social networking sites allow individuals with rare medical conditions to receive information and support from one another. Online relationships underlie the formation of new groups and the emergence of new social links between existing communities (Ellison et al., 2010). Individuals living in geographically isolated communities can develop learning, collaborative, and social relationships outside their immediate area. Employees in distributed, multinational firms can develop the relationships they need in order to find and use expertise within the larger organization

Online relationships as substitutes

There is a longstanding, popular narrative about social media enabled online relationships substituting for, competing with, and otherwise diminishing offline relationships (Wang & Wellman, 2010). For example, a commonly expressed concern is that teenagers are not developing valuable communication and social skills because they only interact through features of social media systems such as pokes, tweets, and texts. Similar concerns surface about social groups in public settings such as restaurants and parks, where the individuals in the groups are present but ignoring one another because they are focused on their mobile devices. Such anecdotes support the idea that social media enabled online relationships can displace and damage offline interaction and relationships.

Social Media and Relationship Dynamics A social relationship exists when two entities have interactions with and expectations for each other over a substantial length of time. While it is possible to consider relationships as static phenomena, in reality relationships are dynamic. Relationships form, develop, and end. Characteristics of relationships that transcend the different stages may still vary in intensity, visibility, and importance over time. Changes within relationships can be deliberately initiated by participants or happen by chance. Thus understanding social media and relationships requires a consideration of how they interact at the different stages of relationship evolution. Relationship formation The formation of a relationship depends on a number of factors including proximity, first impressions, similarity, and complementarity (Dwyer, 2000). The online environment of social media increases or decreases the relevance of some of these factors. Physical proximity is less important because social media systems allow individuals to be physically separated and still frequently interact. Indeed, Facebook is praised for its ability to rekindle relationships between school peers or childhood friends who have moved apart. However, while social media reduce the importance of physical proximity as a factor in relationship formation, they can introduce new functional or communication barriers. Boundaries between social media systems, whether they arise because of corporate structure, technology features, or national policies, all make it less likely that a relationship will form between two individuals using different social media systems. For example, in China the social networking site Facebook is blocked.